‘Whatever Happened to “Love Your Neighbor”?’: Harris Chides Georgia Over Voting Law
Legislation bans handing food and water to those waiting in line to cast ballots
Vice President Kamala Harris took aim at a Georgia state law that made it illegal to provide food and drinks — including bottled water — to voters waiting in line to cast ballots.
She chided the law as she talked about various freedoms in the United States currently under threat, including the right to vote.
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the ban into law in 2021 as part of sweeping elections legislation, dubbed the Election Integrity Act, making it illegal to hand out food or water to people standing in line to vote among other controversial provisions.
Opponents of the law have argued that the purpose of the ban was to prevent people from offering comfort to those waiting in long lines to vote and therefore, dissuade them from voting.
For years, voting rights advocates organized efforts to give away bottles of water or food near voting sites where residents sometimes waited in line for hours to vote. Voters in majority Black neighborhoods have had disproportionate waiting times.
Kemp signed the law in the wake of Joe Biden becoming the first Democrat in decades to carry Georgia a presidential election, as well as Democrats winning both the state’s US Senate seats.
Harris, now running to succeed Biden, took issue with the law in a campaign speech she delivered Monday in the battleground state of Michigan.
“I‘m traveling our nation so I have to tell everyone here that across our nation, we are seeing a full on assault on other and additional hard-fought, hard-won freedoms and rights. Like the freedom to vote,” she said. “I was just in Georgia. You know they passed a law that makes it illegal to give people food and water who are standing in line to vote? The hypocrisy abounds. Whatever happened to: ‘Love your neighbor,’ right?”
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